Problem with Nietzsche

Couldn’t the Last Man easily accept the doctrine of eternal recurrence? If he never had any pain in his life and just had countless little pleasures, than what holds him back from accpeting the doctrine?

Indeed!

"that the “tame man,” the hopelessly mediocre and insipid man, has already learned to feel himself as the goal and zenith, as the meaning of history, as “higher man"—that he has indeed a certain right to feel thus, insofar as he feels himself elevated above the surfeit of ill-constituted, sickly, weary and exhausted people of which Europe is beginning to stink today, as something at least relatively well-constituted, at least still capable of living, at least affirming life.”
[Nietzsche, Genealogy I, 11.]

So the doctrine of eternal return is meant to “smash what is rotten in humanity” (to speak with George Morgan) - i.e., “the surfeit of ill-constituted, sickly, weary and exhausted people” - not the last men!

“The one movement is unconditionally: the levelling of humanity, great ant-hills etc. The other movement, my movement: is conversely the sharpening of all antitheses and clefts, abolition of equality, the production of supreme men [Ãœbermächtiger].
The former generates the last man, my movement the superman. It is absolutely not the intention to conceive of the latter as the lords of the former, but two species [Arten] shall exist alongside each other, - possibly separated; the one, like the Epicurean gods, unconcerned with the other.”
[Nietzsche, Nachlass.]

So the last man and the Superman will exist alongside each other; but in between them, separating them, as a veritable wall of swords, will be the warrior caste. Compare my avatar:

Supermen - gold;
Warriors - red;
Last men - black.

The warriors will, I think, have to struggle with the idea of eternal return.

A lot of people say, often after going through a traumatic and dangerous time, ‘if I had to go back, I wouldn’t change a thing. Every experience, every triumph, every heartbreak - I’d go through it all over again.’ So it seems as though people - some people, at least - are already comfortable with the idea of the ER.

However, the above is only the past viewed through the idea of ER; ER as a view on the future is something probably unheard of in the present world.

As a side point, my view on the ER is based on my belief that time, as we perceive it, is an illusion - in reality, the past and future exist as much as the present, and every moment lasts ‘forever’ in one sense.

I get the sense that when people say this, they are saying they would endure it all again, as if it is a necessary burden, I don’t think this is exactly what Nietzsche had in mind. One must not view it as enduring the hardships again, but one must will the hardships, desire the hardships, love the hardships just as one would will, desire, and love the greatest moments in his/her life.

There are some inaccuracies in the translation I produced. It should rather be:

“The one movement is unconditionally the levelling of humanity, great ant-hills etc. The other movement, my movement is conversely the sharpening of all antitheses and clefts, abolition of equality, the production of supreme men [Ãœbermächtiger].
The former generates the last man, my movement the superman. It is absolutely not the intention to conceive of the latter as the lords of the former, but two species [Arten] shall exist alongside each other, - as much as possible separated; the one, like the Epicurean gods, unconcerned with the other.”
[Nietzsche, Nachlass.]

How much do you emphasize the Nachlass in your understanding of Nietzsche? You don’t seem to be Heideggerian on this point, so do you just pick and choose what meshes with his publications and what does not?

I think The Will to Power, or - as it is sometimes called - the “Revaluation of All Values”, in the German version of which I found this passage, is for the most part a collection of very polished aphorisms - of aphorisms intended for publication, albeit it after (even more) polishing. Nietzsche was well on the way with the preparations of this publication. He held much material back which he wanted to save for The Will to Power. As for the Nachlass as a whole (the Nachlass from earlier years), this contains many sketches and mere notes. From what he did and did not publish in those earlier years, one might infer which parts of The Will to Power should be taken in consideration and which should not.

I regard the Kaufmann edition of The Will to Power and the 1969 DTV edition of the Umwertung aller Werte as two of my most important books written by Nietzsche, along with KSA 1 (The Birth of Tragedy, the Untimely Meditations, and posthumously published writings such as The Greek State and Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks), KSA 4 (Thus Spake Zarathustra), KSA 5 (BGE and the Genealogy) and KSA 6 (the works of 1888).

So you are Heideggerian in this respect, how do you respond to Hollingdale’s claims, In which he site’s letters Nietzsche sent to freinds as proof there was never going to be a will to power or revaluation of all values.

“I have now, with cyncism which will become world-historic, narrated my own story. The work is called Ecce Homo…The whole work is a prelude to the Revaluation of all Values, which lies completed before me: I swear to you that in two years we shall have the whole earth in convlusions. I am a fatality”(written around the time The Anti-Christ was completed)

This suggests that he is done with his “Revaluation of all Values”, which means that the “Revaluation of all Values” is the Anti-Christ.

Hollingdale goes on to say.

“The manuscript title pages preserved in the Nachlass tell the story. The earlier of the who reads: ‘The anti-Christ. Attempt at a Critique of Christianity. Book One of the Revaluation of all Values.’ The later reads: 'The Anti-Christ. Revaluation of all Values. The subtitle has been heavily crossed out, and underneath is written in large characters 'A Curse on Christianity. According to his final intentions, then, the Anti-Christ is neither the whole Revaluation nor the first book of it: like The Will to Power before it, the Revaluation of all Values had been abandoned.”

I don’t know those claims, but I do know the letters. At one point, Nietzsche conceived of The Antichristian as the Revalution of All Values. On the other hand, he had meant this to be the first part of that four-part work, so his calling the first part by the name of the whole is not conclusive, methinks.

That last remark seems to me to be a premature conclusion: why couldn’t Nietzsche have meant to write a book of which The Antichristian would not be a part, by the name of The Will to Power or the Revaluation of All Values? Or by a completely different name? And to still use that material after all?

I don’t want to speculate whether he was going to infact use some of that material in a later book, but you have to keep in mind he had been planning the revaluation of all values for a long time, and then abandoned it. Assuming that much of these aphorisms were written for such a book, to be collected and polished at a later date, it does not bode well for them that he abandoned the project all together.

Point being, he proclaimed the revaluation of all values and was planning it. Meaning many of the aphorisms in will to power were going to be used for this book. Then he abandoned the revaluation of all values, and wrote the anti-christ instead. At face value it would seem that Nietzsche didn’t just decide not to write the book, but rather he abandoned the aphorisms that were going to be employed in the wtp/revoav.

Also, some of the material was taken from his trash at sils maria.

Wrong: he abandoned the Revaluation after he had written The Antichristian.

I think it is up to the reader to decide which passages are polished and which are not. I, for one, think much of the material is very well thought-out, and should be taken seriously.

Certaintly, the only reason it would matter, is in a discussion about what Nietzsche is saying, not in a discussion about how useful and profound his ideas are.

I disagree. I get the feeling that what is often meant is that going through the experience, taught them things, changed their outlook on life, had some joys that would not have been experienced otherwise, a sense of comradeship, and triumph at surving it, that it would be worth going through again. The hardships were not just something that had to be ‘got through’ for the good bits, but were an integral part of one’s journey through life.

But, yes, I’d say you’re right on that part, and that very few people are able to think this way.

Warriors are used to pain, they go gladly towards it in battle. Consider the reward for the warrior in Walhallah - every day for eternity he will fight Odin, and at the end of the day he is ripped to pieces and put back together. This is his reward. The warrior does not struggle with the recurrence of pain, he looks forward to it.
The most spiritual men, however, are not used to pain in that way - they are more physically sensitive - so they do know the depth of it better than anoyone. I think this is what Zarathustra means here:

Die Welt ist tief,
Und tiefer als der Tag gedacht.
Tief ist ihr Weh -

I think that the most spiritual one knows the deepest cold of the night, whereas the warrior knows mostly the heat of the day. The most spiritual one knows the heat of the day better even than the warrior, though, because he can compare it to the night. This knowledge is what he needs to affirm the night and it’s place in the eternal recurrence:

Lust - tiefer noch als Herzeleid:
Weh spricht: Vergeh!
Doch alle Lust will Ewigkeit
will tiefe, tiefe Ewigkeit!